This game is perfectly serviceable, but unlike what many people will tell you, not a good starting point for the series. Plays much closer to the pc-98 entries then the windows games that come after it. Like pc-98, it has the difficulty ranking system, and you cannot see your hitbox when you focus. [the latter can be fixed with a patch, though.]

The music is good, the bosses are great. The amount of resources [bombs/lives] are fair as long as you play well. There's a lot of very memorable spell cards in this game, and it's as beloved as it is for a reason. It's very much worth playing, though it may be a bit of a hassle to get working if you're on windows 10/11